My property lacks bedding area just as the property in this video does. I have deer that call it home when the foliage is on, but come rut they're just passing through. Weather permitting, I'm heading out with a chainsaw this weekend in hopes of doing what this video shows. I don't have many desirable species of trees. My farm is mostly hedge, locust, and elm, but there are a few small red oaks that I hope to release by thinning out the junk trees. If you've hinge cut before, what kind of timeframe am I looking at for the understory to thicken up?

If you are cutting locust and Elm...not very long because those trees sucker and they stress sucker like mad...now that could be a blessing and a curse...the deer will browse the stuff that grow from every inch of live root but I believe Elm is poisonous to just about every thing but deer...maybe wrong...don't think so...This will require your coating the stumps to kill the roots...good thing is locust fix nitrogen so other dormant seeds in the area should do well once the sun hits the area...by the way beech and popular does the same thing ....

This isn't hinging, for popular tend to snap off the stump...They are a great tree for wildlife when they are young but that diminishes as they grow...I have a few stands that hard maple, an oak or two and cherry are competing with.... These are being cut now....The area is a shelf or ledge area on the side of the hill from the top of the pics it drops sharply down the hill to plot areas and behind where I'm standing to take the pics is a plot area and beyond that farther up the hill is a neighbors abandoned pasture land.This is a natural travel area...but I want my grouse to come back..... bedding for the deer ,,,better roost trees for the turkey and sun to the wild apples and plots.....Every single popular that I cut will stress sucker and all those young suckers will benefit the wild life....the canopy I open will encourage bramble...wild strawberry....maple and ash sprouts...which Equal more browse.

The Oak and cherry will be able to grow bigger canopy for better fruiting.....I have many more popular to cut and some bad maples....double grows and splits(non timber) and bad ash trees as well...All of this creating a bit more brush and logs than prudent so once the deer clean the tops I will add to my brush fencing...they use those as winter wind breaks and I use them for view barriers and to steer deer to where I want them....pics below

So winter is still progressing...adding another 3" of snow to what we had left on the ground ...the Deer are showing some signs of dtress with brown pee and light brown dry droppings...they are no longer moving far from the trees I'm dropping and the WR food plots....These pics I took from the PC room window yesterday afternoon...by night fall there were 8 browsing through to tops I'd cut earlier in the day...this is along a WR trail plot...Then others on trail cam trying to get the last little turnip off a plot near another cutting I'm doing....

I have never heard about hinge cutting and therefore don't know much about it other then what I have recently read on here. Would there be any success to hinge cutting an area in the middle of a big woods?

Yes, it could be beneficial if there's enough trash timber to make it feasible. You certainly wouldn't want to hinge cut a money tree or a mast producing one. Just remember that the idea is to create bedding areas, and create new forage growth for food; so you'd want to make sure that you would be able to access the surrounding area to take advantage of what's been created.

In the middle of a big timber I would think that you would basically be creating a 'Sanctuary" with hinge cutting. This may not be something that you would be able to hunt in, but could provide a great bedding and staging area. I would imagine you could hunt this best by setting up between your new sanctuary and the main food source (crop fields?) to ambush deer.

"When a hunter is in a tree stand with high moral values and with the proper hunting ethics and richer for the experience, that hunter is 20 feet closer to God." ~Fred Bear

Pines are money trees, and don't provide any forage for the deer. Also, If you tried to hinge cut a pine, I believe it would break off and you wouldn't have achieved anything. The trees you want to hinge cut are trash trees that put on a lot of foliage that deer will munch on and bed in. The idea is to cut the tree so that it doesn't die, but continues to produce, thus the term "hinge".

Stripe maples and hard maples ,ash,oak,locust,and iron wood are good trees to hing...but also when younger and garbage trees(no timber potential) cutting them off at an angle about chest high late winter will cause them to sprout in the spring giving you more browse at head level for deer...if you have stands in the area that is a very good thing...opens view and shooting for you,light to the ground and deer don't find the area to be as disturbed so will not leave. Also the deer don't have to be looking up to eat and browse a bit longer on one spot